Managing Customer Leases

Published on 13/04/2010

Uncategorized

Leasing is being lauded as an essential tool for the Channel as the UK slowly climbs out of recession. But many Channel Resellers and customers have had bad experiences with leasing companies, either delays in Purchase Orders due to lack of controls and processes in getting a lease for the customer, terrible communication from Leasing Companies or most worryingly high interest rates and hidden costs.

Leasing companies say they have also experienced problems, particularly in the Voice Channel, with over-enthusiastic sales people rolling in extended support contracts and future calls revenue.

Managing the proposal process and having visibility throughout Reseller organisations of all Customer Lease agreements, independently of the Leasing Companies, means that the Channel can now properly generate Repeat Business through proper ‘churn’ of customer leases.

Lease-Desk.com is the Portfolio Management web based solution from Proctor Consulting, designed specifically to generate sales and improve management of Live Customer Agreements for Technology Vendors.

Available on a subscription basis, Lease-Desk.com provides users with full visibility to their leasing portfolio, independently from leasing providers, resulting in full ownership and management of existing and prospect leases.

‘”The concept came about after much liaison through my consultancy work with different telecoms resellers, who were either struggling with the idea of providing leasing for their customer, through a general lack of understanding, or missing valuable repeat business opportunities from not having all of the detailed leasing information readily available”, explains Daniel Proctor, Managing Director for Proctor Consulting.

“Lease-Desk.com is an ideal product for Distributors and Vendors who want to provide their Channels with the best possible tool to assist churn of their base.”

All leases have Technology Refresh Options, the ability to sell more equipment to the customer without increasing their monthly outgoings by signing the lessee into a new lease term, but managing this is a time consuming process: gathering information from various leasing companies, collating this and communicating it to the sales teams. Also monitoring the activity and having control systems in place to ensure no customer reaches the end of term, risking being lost to a competitor, is generally a laborious manual process.

Chloe Whitbread, Lease-Desk.com Product Manager adds, ‘coming from a reseller background myself, I have experienced past issues where leasing wasn’t used to its full capacity, or managed successfully, resulting in loss of customers through competitor action. Lease-desk.com helps combat such issues by sending out Alerts to Account Managers and Sales Managers on actions required so that no business opportunity is missed ever again, not only helping to improve customer satisfaction but also improving retention’.

“With the market moving towards Hosted and Virtual solutions, Resellers have the opportunity to tie customers into sticky long term contracts, as this develops they will need to have management systems in place to manage these contracts. Fortunately there is a product on the market that allows them to do this without being reliant on a Leasing Company.”

“For acquisitive Channel Resellers this system is the perfect tool to understand and manage the leasing portfolio of any company purchases.”